1982 Camaro Steering Box - Steered Light

Lighten Your Front End While You Make It Easy To Steer

With the Camaro safely up on jack stands, the crew at Hollywood Hot Rods tackled the steering box installation in about 4 hours.

In most forms of motorsports, light equals might. Anytime you can lighten up your car it will usually result in lower elapsed times and/or quicker lap times. Steering components, due to the roll they the play in the overall safety of you car, were typically taboo when it came to reducing weight. Sure you could spend tons of dollars and have a rack-and-pinion setup welded in to save a few pounds. And of course there's always been the manual steering route, which entailed going to the scrap yard, finding a steering box that was in good shape and would fit your car, then yanking it out and hauling it home. Those boxes were usually grimy and still pretty heavy. So what's a guy on a budget supposed to do?

The new and affordable answer is to install a new box and steering shaft like the one we got from Flaming River. The advantages of a new versus old steering box are clear. The new box is going to be safer, without a doubt, and it'll come to your door clean and ready to bolt in. The steering shaft is also safer than reusing your old shaft and it will firm up the steering response of your old ride, too.

We thought so well about this idea that we got our hands on a solid '82 Camaro and went about swapping out the old power box for the lighter Flaming River unit. The whole installation took the experienced crew at Hollywood Hot Rods in Burbank, California, about 4 hours and the only trick tools required were a Pitman arm puller and a chop saw, (a hack saw would have worked just as well, but no doubt taken longer). After the installation was complete, this F-body racer not only was lighter by about 25 pounds, it was so much easier to steer, even grandma could drive it now

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With the Camaro safely up on jack stands, the crew at Hollywood Hot Rods tackled the steering box installation in about 4 hours.

The Flaming River steering kit we ordered came complete with a light manual steering box, collapsible steering shaft, stainless steel U-joints, and a new Pitman arm.

Things began with removing the stock steering box, which the Camaro's previous owners had chosen to run without the power steering pump for several years. They must've had very strong forearms.

Not only is the stock GM steering shaft ugly, it's cumbersome and blocks access to items on the engine.

We loosened the locking bolt on the stock steering box using a Chicago Pneumatic (CP) cordless electric impact gun.

The CP cordless impact gun also made quick work of removing the upper retaining bolt on the GM steering shaft.

The lower portion of the stock shaft easily slipped off the steering box and few taps from a hammer knocked the top of the shaft off the steering column stub.

We tackled removing the Pitman arm next by pulling out the cotter pin from its castle nut.

For this whole install, we never even used a ratchet. The CP impact gun fit all of our needs and with a 12-inch extension attached, was used next to remove the castle nut from the Pitman arm. A pickle-fork then made quick work of separating the it from the steering center link.

The crew at Hollywood Hot Rods then used a puller to yank the Pitman arm off the steering box, after busting the large socket loose.

Finally, the steering box could be removed. Again, we put the CP impact gun into action and busted loose the three long bolts that hold the stock box to the frame. The same bolts would later be reused to mount the new box.

The Flaming River steering box we ordered was made of cast iron, which means it's heavier than the aluminum version also available. But this Camaro runs wheels-up 10-second e.t.'s and we felt that an aluminum box might break if subjected to too many hard launches. Besides the iron box is still about 13 pounds lighter then the stock one. And you'll also be removing the power steering pump and its hoses, which take off another 12 pounds.

The day before installation we cleaned and painted the new collapsible shaft and Pitman arm using black VHT engine enamel because it'll be close to the exhaust and therefore subject to lots of heat. Be sure not to paint under the rubber boot on the collapsible shaft because that could make it bind.

The new U-joint would not slip over the stub on the steering column so we cleaned it using an angle grinder with a gasket removal pad attached. You can accomplish the same thing using some steel wool.

The shiny new surface on the column stub was sprayed with clear VHT to keep it from rusting.

Next, both upper and lower U-joints were slipped in place.

A quick measurement between centers of the U-joints told us that we'd need to cut the new steering shaft to 17-inches overall length.

Lucky for us, Hollywood Hot Rods has a metal cold saw that slices through puny shafts like butter. A hacksaw would work just as well, but a little slower.

After cutting the shaft, slip it into the U-joints and tighten it set screws. Then remove it and drill dimples at all locations where the set screws left their mark. That way the shaft will not come out even if the setscrews loosen up a bit.

Insert the shaft, apply some thread locking compound, and tighten the setscrews using an Allen wrench. Then snug the locking nut with a 1/2-inch wrench.

The new box and shaft not only lightened up the nose of this Camaro, it gave us more room to work on the engine too.

A new Grant steering wheel with a centered-top indicator was installed to give the Camaro its final steering improvement. The top-center mark keeps us straight when the front wheels are in the air and the Grant wheel is larger than the tiny racing wheel that came on the car, making steering that much easier. We used Grant's anti-theft system to mount it, too. The system gets bolted onto the steering column and holds the wheel in place. With a turn of a key, the wheel can be removed and locked in the trunk or taken with you to prevent anyone from driving your car away!

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